globalisation

THE SECOND SECESSION | Globalization may be described as the "second secession." Once more, business has escaped the household's confinement, though this time the household left behind is the modern "imagined household," circumscribed and protected by the nation-state economic, military, cultural powers topped with political sovereignty. Once more, business has acquired an "extraterritorial territory," a space of its own, which it can roam, freely sweeping aside minor hurdles erected by weak locals and steering clear of the obstacles built by the strong ones, pursue its own ends and ignore and bypass all other ends as economically irrelevant and therefore illegitimate. And once more we observe social effects similar to those met with moral outcry at the time of the first secession, only (as the second secession itself) of an immensely greater, global scale.

Almost two centuries ago, in the midst of the first secession, Karl Marx charged with the error of "utopianism" those advocates of a fairer, equitable and just society who hoped to achieve their purpose through stopping the advancing capitalism in its tracks and returning to the starting point, to the pre-modern world of extended households and family workshops.

There was no way back, Marx insisted; and on this point at least history proved him right. Whatever kind of justice and equity stands a chance of taking root today needs to start from where the irreversible transformations have already brought the human condition.

Retreat from the globalization of human dependency, from the global reach of human technology and economic activities is, in all probability, no longer in the cards. Answers like "circle the wagons" or "back to the tribal (national, communal) tents" won't do. The question is not how to turn back the river of history, but how to fight its pollution and to channel its flow toward more equitable distribution of the benefits it carries.

And another point to remember. Whatever form the